The Savage

by Frank Bill

  But exactly whose it was he didn’t know.

  From the driver’s and passenger’s sides men stepped. Their eyes like hooked blades parting and digging deep to rip and maim those who dared cross them, armed with automatic AKs, their black-spore locks slicked, faces patched by thick moss like whiskers and jagged scars. Led by a man in his late twenties, face inked and textured to appear skeletal, head shaven like a field of bush-hogged wheat. He’d a rim of thorns running the circumference of his skull and eyes painted by evil. His moniker was Cotto Ramos.

  Cotto and his savages walked past the large oak tree in the front yard where a worn and silver-taped leather heavy bag was hung from a tree limb by a rusted chain; off to the rear of the property sat a barn beneath a graying sky as the men surrounded and surveyed the farmhouse.

  Inside sat a man who knew the die had already been cast. Waking early from sweat-soaked dreams of men he could not name, could only describe as earthly and savage. One was a man with a vendetta, a goal to rule territory and people. The other was young, but held skills from the old ways. And there was the man with the opal eye. The man who’d nearly cost them their lives at the Donnybrook. But what there was not to be seen in the future was Jarhead. A fighter Purcell once believed to be the leader of the struggling class in a time without guidance.

  Two men held opposite flanks of a door, a third kicked in the slab, splinters came with shrieks, followed by features and ribs being knuckled and bloodied. Cotto’s AK rattled the scuffed wood. He shook his head, spit blood, and lined his view to a man of proportioned muscle. Fists raised. He came with a strong left jab. Cotto ducked. Jarhead fed him a right knee, then a quick left elbow. Cotto unsheathed a blade without notice. Lined the edge with his forearm. Came swiping at Jarhead’s right cross. Drawing a line of fluid into tissue, then stabbing into shoulder meat.

  “Fuck!” Jarhead screamed. Staggering backward. His wife, Liz, and two children shouted, “No!” while Christi, Purcell’s daughter, and David, his son-in-law, watched without fight, only horror.

  Cotto retrieved his rifle. “Enough of this weak squabbling.” Pointed his rifle and pulled the trigger. Jarhead Earl’s thigh flowered with the pulp of muscle.

  “Show me your true shades. I want to see your insides.”

  Donnybrook, seemed everything circled back to that, the three-day bare-knuckle brawl that Jarhead had fought in. That he and Purcell had watched go to snuff when the unbeaten pearl-eyed fighter by the name of Chainsaw Angus shot Bellmont McGill, the creator and owner of the free-for-all. Shot his ass dead. Followed by killing a man known as Manny, while the crew that followed him, the Mutts, had watched the murder of each man take place during the chaos, unable to save their lives amongst the unhinged pandemonium, the capital of hell, that had ensued when the unruly crowd of onlookers flooded the wired ring. All manner of chaos came violent and uncontrollable with bottles, fists, feet, elbows, rocks, and clubs beating any and all, similar to what John Milton had written about in Paradise Lost.

  Rousing his men, Cotto shouted, “Each and every body I want accounted for, keep them separate.” He watched Jarhead struggle about the floor. Told him, “Only fight to be left in you is on your knees.” To his men he spoke, “Outside, drag him to the dirt.”

  Pulling the blade from his wound, Jarhead slobbered. Crimson rivered. One of the soldiers kicked the blade from Jarhead’s grip. Another cleaved into his messy lengths of hair. Dragged him across the slats of floor. Swamping a mess of self from the house to the yard, bringing his wife, kids, and Purcell behind him, with Purcell reaching for his family, who were pulled like mops from buckets, by their ankles, sopped in the opposite direction across the slats of floor to the basement. The male tried kicking at the clasp of hand around his leg, bicycling his heels to fight, but was pounded about the face by a rifle’s butt till his frame was dull of struggle. Facedown, the female created a scratch trail, the nails of her digits splintering across the cedar.

  Tied in the basement, the man, David, and woman, Christi, were left to starve. Jarhead’s boys, who numbered two, were gathered with their mineral-flaked skin and eyes of fear. Clutching their mother’s arms, they were loaded by men onto a rusted flatbed, where they were caged, their eyes haunted by the beating of their father. The wife’d be used for whoring back at Cotto’s camp. The children, he’d usher into soldiers. Soldiers who would abide by his goal of ruling the land, and if power were to return, he’d traffic in drugs, just as he had south of the border.

  Cotto and his men would continue their slaughterous hunt for the other, who went by the moniker of Chainsaw Angus. They’d continue throughout Harrison and Orange Counties until they found him. Once they were rid of him, the land would be left for prospering.

  Out in the yard, they’d sat Purcell in a walnut chair before a tree that’d been chopped to a jagged stump. Stained by black liquids. Before him, several men stood armed, with faces devoid of emotion; Purcell’s graying locks and tufted beard fluttered with a brisk breeze that caused his eyes to blink. Cotto taunted about, nothing more than a murky shadow of brawn and death bearing questions. “As you were the last to hold stock on this bare-knuckle fighter whose name is Chainsaw, do you hold communication with him or claim his actions in your dreams? It is known that you rang a deal with this barbaric mercenary. Killed McGill. My father. Then robbed the Donnybrook of its worth.” Purcell sat as though a serpent removed of muscles for speech; tongueless and mute. Cotto pointed to Purcell’s feet with his rifle. Nodded to his men, who bared left and right foot of boots as Purcell tried to kick at them. It did little. His feet were restrained upon the flat area of the cresoled stump. Feet bottoms were bare of boot or sock, facing Cotto, who smirked. “The hammer.” One of his men came with a small mallet. Delivered the indent of fiber. The creak of bone that gave.

  Purcell’s eyes pumped white as fresh dairy cream. Dentitions bit and walled behind sealed lips. Tears flavored bitter down his jaws. Arms tensed and shook.

  “Leave him, he—he knows nothing of which you speak!” Jarhead screamed from the ground.

  And questions were queried from Cotto to Purcell once more as he smiled into Purcell’s pain of wet eyes. “I’ve traveled miles, across desert, woods, trounced through riots, burnt bodies, crumbled lives, I’ve any and every intention of crumbling yours if you do not offer words, as I’ve grown impatient.” From his pocket Cotto removed a vial. White and black granulated powder. Uncapped it with his thumb. Raised it to his right nostril. Sniffed hard. Then to his left. Sniffed even harder. Eyes batted and burned. Tonguing his lips. “Goddamn!” he raged, and continued with “I can see the feline has stolen your usage. Word about the territory proclaims you as a prophet. A sage. Well, prophet, Where. The. Fuck. Is Angus?!”

  “He knows not a trait of what you question!” Jarhead Earl shouted.

  Anger flushed Cotto’s complexion of ink and he came swift, his boot aiming for Jarhead’s facade. Jarhead dodged. Brought his wounded leg around to foot-sweep Cotto, who didn’t drop but bent his leg, brought his knee down into Jarhead. Released his rifle. His thumb digging into the pulpy shoulder wound. “Ahhhh!” Jarhead screamed. Cotto wanted to see him squirm. Then he took on a second thought. Traded his grip on the wound for the grip on his rifle. Stood and stabbed the bore of the barrel into his forehead. “You’ve attained the softness of a crustacean. Jarhead Earl, you’re no fucking more!”

  A smirk decorated Cotto’s face. Finger tug ended Jarhead’s life.

  Back to Purcell, Cotto said, “Bet you didn’t draw that with your prophetic crystal ball, did you, sage?”

  Limbs twisted like knotted roots of a tree by the hands of Cotto’s men, Purcell nearly chewed his tongue in half, saliva and blood ruptured from the corners of his mouth. Glancing to the slab of wickedness. Knowing that whether he spoke or said nothing, speech brought death the same as silence. He was damned if he did, damned if he didn’t. He rasped, “Come closer.” Cotto stepped. “Your ear. Let me speak to it.” Smiling. Cotto turned hi
s ear to Purcell. The prophet nestled a thick glob of lumpy cream-cheese-like goo into the lobe of this man who’d murdered Jarhead.

  Cotto did not wipe the thick spittle. He let the warm gob string to his neck. Raised up.

  “What I expected of you each was badasses. What I got was mush.” Pointing to Earl’s wife and children, who held wailing anger and tears after seeing their husband and father removed. “Your silence brings them whoring and soldiering. It was your choice, prophet.”

  Purcell clasped his eyes.

  Cotto told his men, “Lay him in a posture of rest, prepare him with a message before the stringing for others to know of our trespass.”

  “What of the other you’ve branded with death, Cotto?” one of his men questioned.

  “Saturate him with fuel, let the prophet watch him ignite, coal and smolder.”

  Hands held Purcell down. Popped the buttons from his shirt. Ripped the cotton from his torso. Another punctured his flesh with a smirched blade. Inscribing the scripture of who they once were. The Mutts, the last of Manny’s men. While another formed a knot that rubbed up and down for the passage that would let the eyelet tighten. The twines of fiber slid over Purcell’s chicken neck while his frame writhed from the metal scraping the pectoral and center of his chest. The area became saucy as rare rib eye. Lubricating down his body until the men strung him from a tree. Face blistering. Eyes bulbous. His bare feet kicking some twenty feet above the ground. Before the wet mapped out his crotch and fecal fell around his heels, viewing the flames that cooked Jarhead, Purcell thought of what they’d endured, of his visions; it seemed Jarhead as a leader for the rural was nothing more than dreams, he thought, as the screams and cries from Tammy and her two boys grew distant and faint.

  ANGUS

  Pain came from the tiny spiked steel tips that numbered more than a body’s points of pressure. Poking into arterial bends, the terminals of touching, walking, twisting, and breathing, leaving Chainsaw Angus’s frame in a state of immobility and dark frays of unseen feelers prodding and directing his torso into unknown surroundings until a hiccup of an inhale brought a fit of coughing, and there he sat. Lids batting like moth wings to a Bic of embering light, sectioned by the confines of four concrete walls and a lean-cut Asian man with hands behind his back. One palm holding the other’s wrist, starched white oxford shirt untucked, gray dress slacks down bony knees. Thick measured specs made his eyes appear like a squinting, goggle-eyed bass and his wind-parted locks were of a hue that didn’t represent anything bright. All Angus could muster was “Of what breed are you, motherfucker?”

  Bringing his right hand from behind him, middle finger meeting thumb, one print sliding across the next with pressure creating the clicking sound of a snapping finger. “Up! Up!” the Asian man ordered, lifting his other hand to the ceiling above. “You must become erect, stand!”

  It was the testing of Angus’s abilities.

  Coming to his feet from the chair, Angus was unsteady, his mouth parched and chalky with the taste of crumbling cordite and rotted eggs. His sight burned. The Asian approached him. Angus towered over the miniature frame, who did not bat his view nor flinch upon Angus’s lurching shape. Angus yearned to bring pain and hurt to the ones who’d done this to him, he wanted out of here, wherever here was. And he did what he knew best, other than cooking good crank: he was a master fighter. An unbeaten bare-knuckle boxer who’d at one time been both feared and respected.

  Feinting a left jab that hid Angus’s right uppercut, the Asian man swiveled his hips, caught the underside of Angus’s right triceps with his left knee, smiled. Created a bridge that held Angus’s arm trapped for seconds until the Asian lightly grabbed Angus’s wrist. Applied pressure. Extended his left leg, speared his foot into Angus’s lung point.

  At an awkward posture, Angus tried to twist from the Asian’s hold, only to find the pause of his breath. Eyes blurred. Insides stiffened with ache. Gritting his teeth, Angus was unable to inhale or exhale without pain.

  The Asian released Angus. “I am Fu. Do you not remember your beating of Jarhead Earl in McGill’s barn?” Angus grinned, recalled the cloudy vision of branding a young man’s face with knuckles. Until a tiny individual took to the air with a crazy-ass kick that logged down across the rear of his neck, then someone forgot to pay the light bill, ’cause they got shut the fuck off. And Angus told Fu, “You’re a goddamned dead chink fuck. The loot I was in the process of robbing from McGill, where be it?”

  Fu shook his head.

  Angus bared his teeth and growled as he attacked once more with a strong jab. Fu angled Angus’s attack away. “Anger is weakness. Disrupts your flow. Disrupts your attention to what is countering your attack. Your anger must be fuel, not your fight.”

  Clamping Angus’s throat, Fu used his free hand to grasp Angus’s testicles, gave a quick tug, Angus felt the heave in his gut. Fu smirked. Released him and asked, “Have you found sanction?”

  By his third attempt, Angus was spent with irritation, dropped to the solid surface, and said, “Why’ve you brought me to your layer of belittlement? Is there a point to your ways of showing me your mastery?”

  “In you is a fire that needs to be tamed. Your anger is your strength and your weakness.” Fu palmed his heart with his right hand. “You require change internally. Your elements are disorganized. You’ve wasted your skills on fruitless endeavors.”

  “This some kinda fuckin’ intervention?”

  “No, it is a second chance to breathe, correctly. Internally.”

  “What, chinks breathe differently than redneck cracker motherfuckers?”

  “Internalists call it reverse breathing. Or muscle tendon changing and marrow washing. Unblocking meridians within one’s body, to create a positive flow without restriction, offering balance and building of one’s internal strength.”

  Seated within the concrete walls, Angus’d little option. Chunks of brain matter came down the rinse cycle of his memory; last he remembered he was involved with Bellmont McGill’s bare-knuckle free-for-all, the Donnybrook. Trying to get this crank back. Which got him bartered into a deal to fight. Then all hell broke lose. He decided that McGill’s loot was a much bigger gain than the crank. Chanced a decision to kill McGill and rob the joint with Johnny Earl, an unbeaten fighter accompanied by some old shape of mutton. Purcell. When the chips were tossed to the table’s center and everyone showed their cards, Angus didn’t wanna share the loot. Came to the conclusion that he’d kill Jarhead Earl and the old man. Somehow this razor-eyed Fu showed up and took Angus from all of that.

  “Render me an explanation, Mr. Fu, how is it that you came to be my savior at the Donnybrook?”

  “Only refer to me as Fu.” Fu paused and said, “In due time you shall know all there is to know.”

  Angus’s insides cinched. A clawing pain was reeling him out, he was beginning to shake. Feeling uneasy, as though he could vomit, he looked Fu in the eye. “I need a damn bump.”

  Fu looked beyond Angus, ignored his request. Glanced to the rear corner wall. “You’ve a cot. A table. Clothing in the trunk beneath the cot. Toilet and shower with amenities to the rear of this area. On the table is a bowl. That bowl is your lifeline.”

  Balling his fist, Angus screamed, “Motherfucker, I need to procure some crank!”

  “It is what you shall eat from. With no bowl you’ve nothing to place your sustenance within.”

  “This is a goddamned concreted cell. You’re the warden. That it? Let me spell it out, I don’t get me a fix, I’ll spoon your fucking eyes out with my nails, stomp a path over the floor with your breathing parts.”

  Fu chuckled. Shook his head. “You will not. I shall dismiss your pains. Refresh your tides of thought, I am no warden, I come from the Fukien province of China. And how I came to find you is this: I am employed by a man to collect debts. You and your sister, Liz, voided a man who owed my employer. That debt fell onto you. I hunted and studied you. We rode with each other at one point until you decided t
o offer reckless abandon.” Fu pointed to his jaw. A dime-sized jelly bubble from a cigarette burn, the jerky colored scratches. “You treated my face as an ashtray when we were getting acquainted. Underestimation of you was my mistake as you kicked my head through the driver’s-side glass. Left me tangled in barbed wire. That’s when I realized your skills. Your potential. It is now water beneath the bridge. I’ve taken a leave from my employer to offer tutelage as I’ve done in the past. Once we’re finished, there will be a test of oneness.”

  Angus was drawing a blank. Couldn’t recall much more than those final moments at the Donnybrook and he said, “Tutelage?”

  Irritated, Fu told Angus, “Training is another word for what I do, but also hunting and making death appear…” Fu cleared his throat. “Natural. But that’s later, much, much later. For now let us keep actions simple. You must eat to nourish your strength. But to eat you must earn that privilege, and to stay strong you must train.”

  “Earn?”

  “Yes, earn your nourishment. Shall we begin?”

  With the fog slowly making its way from his mind, Angus stood with little option.

  “Sure, Bruce motherfucking Lee, sure,” he told Fu.

  “Sure is not a positive response, it implies uncertainty. And uncertainty implies weakness. You are not a weak man. Yes or no. That is how you shall answer from here on out.”

  “You’re goddamned kiddin’ me.”

  “No, I am not goddamned kidding you. And I am not Bruce motherfucking Lee, I am Fu. Now, shall we begin?”